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Friday, February 17, 2017

LLNL, Sanctuary Lab

Sanctuary Lab

LLNL is a sanctuary lab for people wanting to pose as scientists and engineers.The work force is second rate and would get slaughtered anywhere else. It's unfortunate that the young, good talent leaves before 40.

60 comments:

People who have actually worked somewhere else recognize the grain of truth here. The scientists are often good but egotistical, and they spend too much time on politics and hoarding resources. Few are top-notch any more, most would starve trying to work outside the gate. The non-scientists are sometimes very good, like the admins and IT, the rest are mediocre and don't work very hard. The engineers can be very good. Most of the really good people, who won't starve outside the gate, leave. Welcome to LLNL in 2017.

It pains me to say but there is indeed some truth to this. I disagree with the starving outside the gate comment. However fact is that the talent at both LLNL and LANL has substantially dropped particularly after the contractchange which is due to the good people leaving. I don't think anyone can deny the decline of the quality people at the labs. One could say that it is due to increased competition however over the same time period ANL, ORNL, and most other DOE labs have maintained their quality or even increased.

I find the statement "The workforce is second rate" provocative and as poster February 17, 2017 at 8:26 PM said, probably driven by some unhappy experience. However, I have to say that over the many years I have been working at LANL and also at other national labs, the ratio of excellent people over mediocre people got smaller and smaller. We still hire great people, but we also hire by necessity mediocre people. Given the huge hiring effort the Lab is undertaking to replace the retiring work force (~30 % over the next 4 years), the quality has to suffer.

Given the asinine micromanagement atmosphere at the lab, we have an additional impediment to "hire the best and the brightest".

So I am less concerned about the current state, but looking at 10 years down the lineI am very much afraid that LANL will have lost its luster. At that time we will be just like GM: Big and devoid of any new ideas.

Actually, a poor performance appraisal at LLNL at various times could have indicated only an out of control, intimidated middle management. Never violate the foremost cardinal sin at LLNL, that of being more competent than your boss. But the OP is correct; a typical employee would not last long on the “outside.” These days the “intangibles” at LLNL are gone, and the pay comparatively sucks. What would help is a “national mission” that utilizes the strengths, and not the weaknesses of LLNL.

The Labs are like any place--roughly 10% of the workforce is capable of stellar work, another 10% is capable of good work, 50% spans average to mediocre, and 30% are surviving on the difficulty of firing and replacing people. The Labs are probably a little more coddled than most places, but I've spent lots of time in the private sector. It's no magical paradise of awesome workers, either.

"The Labs are like any place" I agree but the labs are not suppose to be like any place they are suppose the for best and brightest or least they that was the way it had been. Now they are nothing special, just another job with a few good people and mostly average to below average people on par with any old run of the mill engineering firm.

"What would help is a “national mission” that utilizes the strengths, and not the weaknesses of LLNL."

What the heck did you think that NIF/LIFE was for ! To occupy the majority of LLNL in a National Mission to attract talent and keep the money flowing in ! NIF was for target physics, LIFE was for large aperture high power and energy/high average power laser science. You know, the kind that can be used for National Defense.

However, the negative blow back from the non-NIF'ers was an impediment and hurt the program IMO. Constant back stabbing from the Directors Office and lack of a united front at DOE hurt NIF and LLNL.

Maybe stockpile stewardship science "shots" can keep NIF and LLNL going for the rest of the decade.

What hurt NIF and LLNL was the bold lie about ignition, and the utter failure of ignition on NIF, not lack of director support or united front. In fact, Miller let Moses get away with stunning ethical failures that he would be (and eventually was, at GMT) fired for in the real world. If you build your national mission on lies and religion, it will eventually come apart.

NIF was a dalliance, an expensive one, and a political decision to assuage the Galvin Report true believers. 100% science based stockpile stewardship with 0% test was a fantasy. In addition, the other notion that the National Labs were some kind of "science and technology" treasure chest, waiting to be unleashed upon United States industry with transformative effects did not pan out too well either. Face it, the national mission of the past 25 years has been as effective as stacking quarters.

Tech transfer didn't pan out because lab scientists don't normally consider cost and marketability, they re-invent wheels because they don't know what is already going on in industry, and they are ridiculously expensive after you add up overhead and all the cling-ons. There are already some really sharp people out there. The notion that lab scientists are so brilliant that they can just parachute in to really hard problems and dazzle the world with their solutions, was naive.

OK, so you're a non-scientist who couldn't quite make it to/through graduate school. Your complete misunderstanding of what scientists actually do explains why. Re-invent wheels? How about a few examples, just for grins. Published scientific literature on research results that have already been published and engineered and marketed. Got any? Didn't think so.

LOL! , the poster did not say that "science" does not contribute substantially to the market, but that the kind of science performed in the national laboratories does not contribute substantially to the market. Ad-hominems are not your thing, I gather. I'd stay away from them in the future.

I think the pay is good. If you work hard people notice. If you want more make your case. If you find your co-workers need help do it. If you're bored learn a new skill, eat better, and get some exercise. Keep it simple folks.

Then there are the cultural issues. Let's face it, a lot of national lab scientists are like 5:39 PM, and wouldn't last a week working around normal people who don't put up with sociopaths. Bad for teamwork, which is bad for business.

"Then there are the cultural issues. Let's face it, a lot of national lab scientists are like 5:39 PM, and wouldn't last a week working around normal people who don't put up with sociopaths. Bad for teamwork, which is bad for business.

February 19, 2017 at 8:32 PM"

Sorry pal, but this just not add up. Almost everyone I know who has left the lab has found employment, some left for better opportunities and some left for other reasons but the notion that lab workers cannot find jobs outside is just nonsense. You may probably have a point that the quality of the lab workforce is down from what it was in the past but that does not mean the current workforce members cannot find jobs. You also seem confused about how science is done at the labs or elsewhere. The labs are not suppose develop market products, it may happen on occasion but that is not the purpose.

I have to go with the other poster that said you are some kind of pathetic bitter person who could not cut it at the lab or elsewhere. Your statements are just plain wrong or even delusional. It is just speculation but blogs like this always get a few of your kind. The world does not owe you ANYTHING, get that through your head. You cannot blame others for your personal failures in life what you need to do is take responsibility for your live and move on.

Well if you look at a comparable size university, say Stanford for example, you see the quality of LLNL. Stanford puts out about 10-100X more publications per year than LLNL. Just go and search the publication databases. So whatever "quality" is going on at LLNL is not resulting in publications that are the best indicator of quality. My time at Livermore I saw a lot of scientists who might be classified as "adequate". In the scientific community, Livermore scientists are viewed more as production scientists than researchers. Now some of this mediocrity is not all the scientists fault, the management there is bloated and useless. The management are there for one reason only, themselves and their position. They clearly only give a hoot about the lab mission when it benefits them in some ways. And many Livermore managers sole function is to justify their position somehow by inserting themselves in the research somehow thus slowing it up and reducing quality. Seriously, the managers there are beyond inept. It is disturbing to think how much tax money is wasted on these folks. I can tell you one group of scientists that talk about Livermore scientists more than any other and heap high praise on their work, yeah you guessed it, it is the Livermore scientists themselves. They do think highly of themselves, not sure why.

Stanford puts out about 10-100X more publications per year than LLNL.February 20, 2017 at 12:32 AM

First a disclaimer: I do not work at LLNL, actually I work at LANL.

Let's look at your statement:Stanford puts out about 10-100X more publications per year than LLNL. 1. where did you get this?2. Are you comparing only science publications or all the publications?3. Are the publications in peer reviewed journals?4. If your data point has an order of magnitude uncertainty, it seems to me that your experiment might have some validity problem.5. How do you account for the classified work?

There might be a reason, why you are bitter about LLNL, but that is no excuse for making any denigrating statements you want about people working there.

"Stanford puts out about 10-100X more publications per year than LLNL. "

This is total and pure BS and kills off your credibility right on the spot, these numbers have been posted on the old blog the numbers are actually close to parity. LANL is actually higher than Stanford.

"In the scientific community, Livermore scientists are viewed more as production scientists than researchers. "

Again BS, I am in the community and I have never heard anything like this.

Gotta call BS on you, I have no idea who you are but you have no idea what you are talking about. In any case why not state your "credentials", I think we will find that you are a bitter ex-employee that could not cut.

There's our sociopath again. Any statement that impugns the sterling brilliance of lab scientists must have been made by a bitter ex-employee who could not cut it, and is met by a challenge to "identify yourself" or "state your credentials". You, Sir, are a cretin who makes the rest of us look like you.

This is awesome. The demand for “credentials” and accusations of “bitterness,” the irony is too rich to measure. LLNL, LANL, Sandia have all been in free fall as the “talent” continue to departs, by retirement or other means. Stopgap, afterthought and ineffective mentoring programs are too little too late. Bitterness is not an attribute that is credible here, amusement is. Anyone who was measurably bitter left in the 1990’s, and who was left got to wander around in Dad’s clothes for a couple decades until they were a poor facsimile of Dad. Live with it, you certainly earned it for hanging on like grim death for so long.

"Stanford puts out about 10-100X more publications per year than LLNL. Just go and search the publication databases. "

After looking at the American Physical Society for publications from 2007-2017 for the two different affiliations gives Livermore 1900 publications, Stanford gets 2600 publications so the ratio is like 1.3 X more publications not 10-1000X so it looks like 7:32 AM poster is right that it is close to 1:1.

Being off by 10-100X kind of puts a hole in your overall credibility.

Anyone can check just put in affiliation and a custom range 2007-2017 below is the linkhttp://journals.aps.org/search

Narrow up the range to 2015-2016, and it's just about 2:1. That makes sense, since LLNL has been descending to mediocrity since 2007. This is just in APS journals, there are many other journals out there. And Stanford no-doubt publishes a lot more in those journals, since it is not a physics lab like LLNL. So 10:1 might not be far off. 100:1 is probably a gross exaggeration.

"And Stanford no-doubt publishes a lot more in those journals, since it is not a physics lab like LLNL."

You would have to compare the fields that LLNL has to the Stanford and that is presumably what the poster meant not comparing publications in history journals, so the 10:1 is still a gross exaggeration. The point is the guy is said this is lacking in credibility.

Now LLNL sliding over the years since 2007 may well be true and ties in with the contract change time line and with the general perception of the lab.

You scientists make me sick, of course they poster did not actually mean 100 timesmore, any fool could see that, what he meant as just that Stanford has more publications so the argument that LLNL is utterly mediocre is airtight.

I don't need to give you any dam evidence, credentials are a load of crap and everyone knows it, does Bill Gates have a PhD, I think not. I am not bitter I am happy that I am out of the hell hole of LLNL and science, both are filled with arrogant jerks who go on about evidence, credentials and so called facts. LLNL could not cutt it with me, maybe it could for losers like you. And just to repeat this so it is so utterly clear I am not bitter and I really could care less about LLNL, hell I never even give a moments thought. Mic drop

You seem inconsistent, 10:03. You post on the LLNL blog a dozen times a day. If you really didn't care that you couldn't cut it at LLNL you would just walk away. It's probably one of two things;

You have a delusion that people will acknowledge your superior intellect when they read your (quite wacky) posts, but that isn't happening. People quickly pegged you as a loser, you've failed as badly on this blog as you failed at LLNL,

or, you're really just a juvenile posing as an ex-LANL employee. You seem to have the intelligence and experience level of a 14 year-old.

All publications is a very odd caparison since you are counting papers in English Literature, Law Journals, Medical Journals, History, Languages, Business and so on. The correct comparison would be to the science journals only. The troll poster was talking about scientists at LLNL not Law professors, and no it is not 10 or 100 times.

So we have established that the correct number is somewhere between about 1.3 (APS physics journals only, 2007 to 2017) and 8 (all papers in Scopus, 2010 to 2017). 8 is pretty close to 10, and if you restrict the range to more recent years it probably will be 10. So the poster was correct enough claiming 10 times more publications (not just science papers, read the original post) from a comparable-size university. 100 is a factor of ten too large, but 10x is ballpark correct. Q.E.D.

I trolled your idiot scientists so hard! It is sooo effing funny! Ha ha ha, ROFLAO of course no sane person would be believe that Stanford has 100 times more publications LLNL, it is just crazy but you stupid geeks feel for it, ha ha ha, I actually got you to check the numbers, crazy just crazy! No wonder we all hate scientists and think they are looooserrrs!. I am so glad that I left the lab, I am better off without LLNL and I will not let it define me or defeat me!!! Oh just to remind all you idiots, I never think about LLNL and I an not bitter, get that straight I am NOT BITTER...NOT BITTER!!!

8:43 AM must be the same Mr. Prove It that 7:00 AM was talking about. Perhaps he lumps "them" into a single entity in his mind, an evil entity that must be battled forever. I hope his family has found ways to cope with his mental illness.

This is an amusing thread. The better metric would be publications per PhD scientist (labs) or faculty (university).

Stanford has about 2100 faculty spread across 7 different schools and does $1.22B of sponsored research. Only 2.5 of those schools would be relevant to a comparison to either LANL or LLNL -- Earth Sciences (60 faculty), Engineering (250 faculty), and the Sciences component of Humanities and Sciences (570 faculty, but only 5 relevant departments out of 24 -- so be generous, assume 200 faculty are in comparable areas). The medical school, law school, English Dept., etc., should not be included because the labs have nothing comparable.

So, the better comparisons would be publications by those 510 Stanford faculty to publications (open peer-reviewed and classified technical reports, not progress memos, etc.) by the labs' 2000+ cadre of PhD research scientists.

Does LLNL actually have 2000+ PhD research scientists? Doesn't Stanford also have non-faculty (tenure track) research scientists that publish (just like every other major university)? Are you counting SLAC? Do try to be accurate.

Does LLNL actually have 2000+ PhD research scientists? Doesn't Stanford also have non-faculty (tenure track) research scientists that publish (just like every other major university)? Are you counting SLAC? Do try to be accurate.

I would also Stanford must also have around 500-600 graduate students across all these areas, many more postdocs and also SLAC which is a user facility always and that has several hundred as well.

I think we can all agree that the troll poster is simply full of it and suffers from some serious personal issues that he projects on the outside world.

We ran the numbers and you lost, deal with it. Through out another lie so you can see you ass handed to you again. This blog and reality have not been very kind to you but maybe you are into that kind of thing.

Go back and search for the grammar and spelling mistakes in your post, then think a little about how your inadequate mastery of English (presumably your birth language) has over the years affected your career and professional advancement. Why did others get the job you wanted? Why were you passed over for that job or promotion? Maybe it was because of your inability to communicate in a clear and knowledgeable way? Your grammatically incorrect and misspelled resume? If you speak the way you write, maybe it was even worse? Education and intelligence are not the same. Lack of the former is fixable, lack of the latter is not.

Although the persons grammar is lacking I doubt they are off by 10-100 on numerical estimates. You know numbers are kind important in science and engineering, which may explain why you might have some bitterness about the field. Just saying.

Please read the comment you were snarking on more closely. Note that it says specifically **labs'**' not **lab's**. Plural versus singular.

According to the LANL and LLNL web sites, LLNL has 1302 PhD's, LANL claims 21% of 6850 LANS employees have PhD (that would 1438) but LANL's data is unclear whether 300+ post-docs are included in the overall.

So, 1302 + 1438 = 2740 PhD's. the use of "2000+" is absolutely correct -- although it could also have been stated as "nearly 3000" too.

1:1 is still not 1:10-100. The original troll poster was clearly implying Stanford scientists publish 100 times more than LLNL scientists. The poster was also dumb enough to say that this could be checked which it was and shown to be utterly wrong. The subsequent backpedaling and deflection by the troll has been truly astounding but rather typical of some very bitter ex-LLNL employees that we all know.

Every is bitter, according to Mr. Bitter, who we've all seen post too many times before.

March 4, 2017 at 4:03 PM

Bitter is as bitter does.

Our troll poster complains about LLNL every week or so to say how everyone who works at LANL sucks. I think we all know who the bitter one is in this case. We all know a few very bitter ex-LLNL employees who have an axe to grind, unfortunately they also have an extreme lack of self-awareness Just saying ;)